Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission's Trump-appointed chairman, pushed back hard against claims that the agency engineered an early license renewal demand against ABC as retaliation for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's joke about Melania Trump. Carr said the move was purely investigative in nature, rooted in a months-old FCC probe into the network's diversity and inclusion practices.
The FCC announced that ABC's eight owned-and-operated television stations must apply early to renew their licenses, a decision that came just 24 hours after the first lady and President Trump publicly called for the network to terminate Kimmel. The timing sparked immediate suspicion from industry observers, press freedom advocates, and Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who warned that government should not act as "the speech police."
Carr framed the order as a straightforward consequence of an investigation launched in March 2025 into Disney and ABC's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. He cited what he characterized as Disney's failure to promptly produce documents requested by the agency, claiming the company had only recently delivered hundreds of pages of materials that the FCC viewed as evidence of non-cooperation.
"This was a decision that we made inside this building based on where we were in the enforcement matter," Carr said during a press conference. "There was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside."
The FCC chairman doubled down on the agency's rationale, saying broadcasters must comply with public interest standards and Equal Employment Opportunity obligations. "You can't discriminate based on race and gender and there's evidence that had been submitted that that's what Disney was doing," Carr said, pointing to the timeline of the investigation as the basis for the agency's latest action.
Carr also acknowledged the firestorm his recent decisions have ignited. "I mean, the New York Times has already written my obituary," he said. "It doesn't look good. I can't really do anything to improve that or hurt it at this point, so I am not really that bothered by it."
The National Association of Broadcasters called the order "nearly unprecedented," while press freedom organizations condemned it as a chilling example of government targeting a disfavored media outlet for editorial reasons.
The lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, Anna M Gomez, rejected Carr's explanation entirely. "This is clearly a pretext," she said. "This is just another part of the pattern of harassment and retaliation in order to bend Disney to this administration's will." Gomez predicted the renewal process could drag on for years, during which ABC would continue operating normally.
She warned that Tuesday's order sends a dangerous signal to other broadcasters. "What's clear to me is that this action is meant to warn others that they could be subject to similar action," Gomez said, calling it "unlawful, unprecedented, and doomed to fail."
The FCC is also investigating Comcast and NBCUniversal's diversity practices, an investigation that began in February 2025. When pressed about whether NBC might face similar licensing consequences, Carr said the outcome would depend on the facts uncovered in each individual case.
Disney responded by defending its compliance with FCC regulations, a statement that Gomez said gave her confidence that the network would ultimately prevail in any dispute with the agency.
Author James Rodriguez: "Carr's insistence that timing is purely coincidental strains credulity when the FCC chief has spent months signaling his intent to police corporate speech and ideology."
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